September 28, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -
MySpace, the social networking Web site, could be worth around $15 billion
within three years, measured in terms of the value created for shareholders of
parent company News Corp., a Wall Street media analyst forecast on
Wednesday.

RBC Capital analyst
Jordan Rohan said he had come away from a meeting with Fox Interactive, the
managers of MySpace, believing that “media investors may not fully appreciate
what has already been done with MySpace or what may lie ahead.”

“$15 billion in a
few years? It is possible,” Rohan wrote in a research note to
clients.

MySpace was
acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million less than a year ago.
It now boasts more than 90 million active users.

Rohan said MySpace
could demonstrate a value of between $10 billion and $20 billion within a few
years. Acknowledging he was making an “audacious claim” he justified the
forecast on the basis of MySpace’s “raw, unprecedented user/usage
growth.”

He also said the
site’s “massive” international appeal, capacity to become “an intellectual
property distribution powerhouse” and experienced management team lent
credibility to his prediction.

Rohan based his
view on an extrapolation of estimates for the value of Internet properties
ranging from $1 billion for both MySpace rivals YouTube and Facebook to the
market capitalization of $120 billion for Google Inc.

He said MySpace was
currently sold out of space for video advertising. The CPM, or price per
thousand ad views, on a premium show such as Fox’s The Simpsons runs as high as
$35-40 on MySpace, he said.

MySpace management
believes its video service ranks No. 3 among U.S. Web users behind Yahoo Inc.
and YouTube, Rohan said following the Tuesday meeting with Fox
officials.

Britain is adding
25,000 MySpace member profiles per day. Australia has 2 million unique users.
MySpace France began public testing three weeks ago, he noted.

MySpace is
internally developing a MySpace Web application to run on mobile phones that
should be launched in three to four months with a major U.S. carrier, he
said.

Copyright
2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of
Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of
Reuters.

September 25, 2006

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Marketing by Toli Cefail – Sin # 6 -
Envy– If you’re just joining us, we
are in the home stretch of our 8 article series on the 7 well known deadly sins
and how they apply to marketing. Why 8 articles? Because we’ve added an eighth
sin which we believe to be just as deadly as the popular seven deadly sins. So
here we go now with our 6th deadly sin of marketing – envy.

Why do executives feel they must do everything their
competition does? The coveting of what the competition has is epidemic in board
rooms.

The second the competition comes out with a product,
companies rush to put forth one of their own. When the competition goes after a
demographic, they rush to follow.

This competition envy or “copy-cat syndrome”, to coin a phrase,
is prevalent in nearly every major consumer products corporation. The result is
diluted brands all over the place.

Why is brand dilution a bad thing you say? Because it takes
years and tons of dollars to establish a brand. Every time you branch off into
a different product line you dilute the brand. Instead of your brand standing
for the product, service and characteristics that made it famous, it now has to
try and stand for this new thing. So it has less meaning and with multiple new
directions the brand can eventually mean nothing.

Another industry in which envy is prevalent is

Hollywood

. Particularly in
television. Whenever there is a successful show, the remaining networks rush to
copy it.

Nowhere is this more obvious than with reality tv. 5 years
ago there were maybe 2 reality tv shows. Today there are dozens. The marketing
result is that sponsors are now spread thin over dozens of shows instead of
choosing between a few.

No matter which industry you look at however, envy in
marketing results in the dilution of your brand and a wishy washy appearance to
consumers. The message then is stay focused on what you’re known for. Create
new products and services based on what your customers know and love about your
company and resist the urge to copy your competition. – Toli Cefail

Toli Cefail is a
veteran marketing professional with more than 20 years of experience
creating successful marketing campaigns for her own companies and the companies
of her clients. She is currently a principle in the leading online marketing
firm In Touch Media Group (www.InTouchMediaGroup.com).

September 01, 2006

Most of us know gluttony to mean excess in eating or
drinking. It can also be used to mean excessive intake of any kind.

So how does gluttony happen in marketing? Here’s how.

I’ve seen this a hundred times if I’ve seen it once. A
company executive or entrepreneur notices an apparently “hot” industry or
market such as long distance phone service, diet colas, credit cards or dating
web sites.

They see many companies making tons of money doing this
activity so they decide they’re going to get in on it.

They start to market their product. They may spend hundreds
of thousands or millions of dollars promoting this new product.

Then shortly after they start marketing it, they wonder why
they’re not selling as much as they thought they should. They wonder why
everyone is not as excited about their product as their competitors and why
they’re not yet cashing in on this extremely popular market.

The answer is they went into a market that was already saturated
with providers with no game plan on how to differentiate themselves. In short,
they lack creativity.

They wanted to partake of this seemingly giant pie. And they
figured if they just bit into it, they’d reap the rewards.

Unfortunately with marketing, it’s not that simple.

You have to offer something that people want. If you have
competition, you have to figure out a way to stand apart from them in a more
appealing way to your potential customers. You should NEVER expect to get
business just because you offer a good or even great product.

This is done by finding a niche within the market you’re
after.

You find a niche that is not being serviced. Then you come
up with a creative way to service that niche.

It’s a good idea to survey potential customers to find the
niche you should go after and what they would want or expect from your product
BEFORE embarking on a marketing campaign or even any product development.

Another way to avoid this sin is to get creative! Get
creative and invent a service or product that caters to a market that is not
being serviced. Why do you need to go into a business that a zillion other
people are in anyway? Get creative!

Ultimately, gluttony in marketing is solved by not having to
have part of every market you see. Get creative and make your own market.

---- Toli Cefail is a professional marketing consultant and
is currently the Chief Operating Officer for the leading online marketing firm
In Touch Media Group (ITOU.OB). In Touch Media Group is a full service online
marketing firm with specialties in applied market research and paid search
marketing. For more info visit www.InTouchMediaGroup.com
and www.MarketingExpertsNews.com
.